Déterminants des transferts intergouvernementaux : le cas des communes Marocaines

Using an unexplored panel data on 1388 Moroccan municipalities from 2005 to 2009, this paper tries to investigate if the Moroccan central government follows a formula based approach when it redistributes the Value Added Tax (VAT) to local municipalities. By identifying the most important factors behind the allocation of these resources, we find evidence that the allocation formula is not respected in the redistribution of the VAT. Socio-economic variables are significant, implying that there is an underlying system of equalization with an important bias toward urban municipalities; Political factors do also play an important role in this redistribution process, and this supports the hypothesis of a tactical redistribution rather than a targeted redistribution. Besides, "swing municipalities" receive more transfers than others and being a municipality ruled by supporters of the central government does not seem to determine the amount of transfers to be received. Further quantile analysis shows that there is a real heterogeneity in the conditional distribution of the VAT and the impact of socio-economic characteristics depends on the amount of VAT received.